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Organic baby food startup among businesses to launch on all-female funding platform

The world’s first funding platform for female entrepreneurs has launched today featuring three female-led UK startups who are seeking investment.

AllBright, which was launched last October by entrepreneur Debbie Wosskow and Hearst Magazines UK chief Anna Jones, selected organic baby food startup, Piccolo, flexible working platform Juggle Jobs and Fluidly as the first companies to feature on the platform.

It means that crowd investors can now begin investing in the female-led companies, after they were deemed ‘outstanding’ as part of AllBright’s due diligence process.

The startups

Founded by Catherine Gazzoli, Piccolo’s brand of 100% organic baby food is already stocked in the likes of Asda and Waitrose despite only officialy launching 8 months ago and is already expanding its range of stage two meal range.

Fluidly, which was founded by serial entrepreneur Caroline Plumb OBE, is a FinTech startup which helps aims to help SMEs with their cashflow by helping them to pay their invoices on time.

Finally, Juggle Jobs, which is headed up by Romanie Thomas, is a platform which is aiming to get more high-quality female leaders into businesses by placing candidates into flexible working positions, and includes coaching and peer-to-peer mentoring services.

Female entrepreneurs in the UK

To coincide with the launch, an AllBright-commissioned report has found that, in comparison to European Union countries with similar economies, the UK has an above average level of female engagement in entrepreneurial activities.

However, the UK does not fare so well in comparison to non-EU rivals including the USA and Canada when it comes to the proportion of women who cite entrepreneurial endeavours as their primary source of income, with Canadian women in particular being three times more likely to engage in entrepreneurship.

In light of the findings, Anna Jones said: “It’s promising to see that so many women are engaging in entrepreneurship on many differing levels.

“But the report shows that there is still more to be done to foster a nurturing environment that encourages more women to see entrepreneurship as a viable career option, and encourages those women that already have businesses to scale and turn their companies into world-class empires.

“Part of building a nurturing environment is helping female founders to raise finance and provide access to supporting services. AllBright exists solely to address these issues. Our ambition for this year is for AllBright to do everything in its power to ensure that Britain becomes the best place in the world to be a female founder.”

The AllBright Crowd platform is part of a three-pronged approach to injecting more investment into the UK’s female entrepreneurial landscape, in combination with the AllBright Angel Network and business education resource AllBright Academy.

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